Little Silk Wing

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Title:     Little Silk Wing
Author: Charles G. D. Roberts [More Titles by Roberts]

The first of the twilight over Silverwater. So ethereal were the thin washes of palest orange and apple-green reflection spreading over the surface of the lake, out beyond the fringe of alder bushes, so bubble-like in delicacy the violet tones of the air among the trees, just fading away into the moth-wing brown of dusk, that the Child was afraid to ask even the briefest questions, lest his voice should break the incomparable enchantment. Uncle Andy sat smoking, his eyes withdrawn in a dream. From the other side of the point, quite out of sight, where Bill was washing the dishes after the early camp supper, came a soft clatter of tins. But the homely sound had no power to jar the quiet.

The magic of the hour took it, and transmuted it, and made it a note in the chord of the great stillness. From the pale greenish vault of sky came a long, faint twang as of a silver string, where the swoop of a night hawk struck the tranced air to a moment's vibration. A minute or two later the light splash of a small trout leaping, and then, from the heart of the hemlock wood further down the shore, the mellow _hoo-hoo-hoo-oo_ of a brown owl.

The Child was squatting on the mossy turf and staring out, round-eyed, across the water. Suddenly he jumped, clapped both grimy little hands to his face, and piped a shrill "Oh!" A bat's wing had flittered past his nose so close that he might have caught it in his teeth if he had wanted to--_and_ been quick enough.

Uncle Andy turned, took his pipe from his mouth with marked deliberation, and eyed the Child severely.

"What on earth's the matter?" he inquired, after a disapproving pause.

"I thought it was trying to bite my nose," explained the Child apologetically.

"There's not very much to bite, you know," said Uncle Andy, in a carping mood at having had his reveries disturbed.

"I know it's pretty little, and turns up--rather," agreed the Child; "but I don't want anything to bite it."

"Nonsense!" said Uncle Andy. "Who'd want to?"

"It was that bat!" declared the Child, pointing to the shadowy form zigzagging over the fringe of bushes at the edge of the water. "He came down and hit me right in the face--almost."

"That bat bite you!" retorted Uncle Andy with a sniff of scorn. "Why, he was doing you the most friendly turn he knew how. No doubt there was a big mosquito just going to bite you, and that little chap there snapped it up in time to save you. There are lots of folk beside bats that get themselves misunderstood just when they are trying hardest to do some good."

"Oh, I see!" murmured the Child politely--which, of course, meant that he did not see at all what Uncle Andy was driving at. "_Why_ do bats get themselves misunderstood, Uncle Andy?"

His uncle eyed him narrowly. He was always suspecting the Child of making game of him--than which nothing could be further from the Child's honest and rather matter-of-fact intentions. The question, to be sure, was rather a poser. While he pondered a reply to it--apparently absorbed in the task of relighting his pipe--the Child's attention was diverted. And forever the question of why bats get themselves misunderstood remained unanswered.

The bat chanced at the moment to be zig-zagging only a dozen feet or so away, when from the empty air above, as if created on the instant out of nothingness, dropped a noiseless, shadowy shape of wings. It seemed to catch the eccentric little flutterer fairly. But it didn't--for the bat was a marvelous adept at dodging. With a lightning swerve it emerged from under the great wings and darted behind Uncle Andy's head. The baffled owl, not daring to come so near the hated man-creatures, winnowed off in ghostly silence.

At the same moment a tiny, quivering thing, like a dark leaf, floated to the ground. There, instead of lying quiet like a leaf, it fluttered softly.

"What's that?" demanded the Child.

"_Hush_!" ordered Uncle Andy in a peremptory whisper.

The shadowy leaf on the ground continued to flutter, as if trying to rise into the air. Presently the bat reappeared and circled over it. A moment more and it dropped, touched the ground for a second with wide, uplifted wings, and then sailed off again on a long, swift, upward curve. The fluttering, shadowy leaf had disappeared.

For once the Child had no questions ready. He had so much to ask about all at once. His eyes like saucers with interrogation, he turned appealingly to his uncle and said nothing.

"That was the little one--one of the two little ones," said Uncle Andy obligingly.

"But what?--why?--"

"You see," went on Uncle Andy, hastening to explain before he could be overwhelmed, "your poor little friend was a mother bat, and she was carrying her two young ones with her, clinging to her neck with their wings, while she was busy hunting gnats and moths and protecting your nose from mosquitoes. When the owl swooped on her, and so nearly caught her, she dodged so violently that one of the little ones was jerked from its hold. Being too young to fly, it could do nothing but flutter to the ground and squat there, beating its wings till the mother came to look for it. How she managed to pick it up again so neatly, I can't say. But you saw for yourself how neat it was, eh?"

The Child nodded his head vigorously and smacked his lips in agreement.

"But why does she carry them around with her that way?" he inquired. "It seems to me awfully dangerous. I don't think _I'd_ like it."

He pictured to himself his own substantial mamma swooping erratically through the air, with skirts flying out behind and himself clinging precariously to her neck. And at the thought he felt a sinking sensation at the pit of his stomach.

"Well, you know, you're not a bat," said Uncle Andy sententiously. "If you were you'd probably think it much pleasanter, and far _less_ dangerous, than being left at home alone while your mother was out swooping 'round after moths and June bugs.'"

"Why?" demanded the Child promptly.

"Well, you just listen a bit," answered Uncle Andy in his exasperating way. He hated to answer any of the Child's most innocent questions directly if he could get at them in a roundabout way. "Once upon a time"--("Ugh!" thought the Child to himself, "_this_ is going to be a fairy story!" But it wasn't). "Once upon a time," went on Uncle Andy slowly, "there was a young bat--a baby bat so small you might have put him into your mother's thimble. He lived high up in the peak of the roof of an old barn down in the meadows beside the golden, rushing waters of the Nashwaak stream, not more than five or six miles from Fredericton. We'll call him Little Silk Wing."

"_I_'ve been to Fredericton!" interjected the Child with an important air.

"Really!" said Uncle Andy. "Well, Little Silk Wing hadn't. And now, who's going to tell this story, you or I?"

"I won't interrupt any more!" said the Child penitently. "But why was he called Little Silk Wing, Uncle Andy?"

His uncle looked at him in despair. Then he answered, with unwonted resignation, "His wings weren't really any silkier than those of his tiny sister. But he got hold of the name _first_, that's all. So it was his!

"When the two were first born they were so tiny as to be quite ridiculous--little shriveled, pale mites, that could do nothing but hang to their mother's breasts, and nurse diligently, and grow. They grew almost at once to the same color as their mother, plumped out till they were so big as to be not quite lost in a thimble and developed a marvelous power of clinging to their mother's body while she went careering through the air in her dizzy evolutions.

"But when they were big enough for their weight to be a serious interference with their mother's hunting, then she was forced, most reluctantly, to leave them at home sometimes. She would take them both together into the narrow crevice between the top beam and the slope of the roof, and there they would lie motionless, shrouded in their exquisitely fine, mouse-colored wing membranes, and looking for all the world like two little bits of dry wood. It was not always lonely for them, because there were usually at least two or three grown-up bats hanging by their toes from the edge of a nearby crack, taking brief rest from the toil of their aerial chase. But it was always monotonous, unless they were asleep. For all movement was rigorously forbidden them, as being liable to betray them to some foe."

"Why, what could get at them, away up there?" demanded the Child, to whom the peak of a lead always seemed the remotest, most inaccessible, and most mysterious of spots.

"Wait and see!" answered Uncle Andy, with the air of an oracle. "Well, one night a streak of moonlight, like a long white finger, came in through a crack above and lit up those two tiny huddled shapes in their crevice. It came so suddenly upon them that Little Silk Wing, under the touch of that blue-white radiance, stirred uneasily and half unfolded his wings. The movement caught the great, gleaming eyes of an immense brown hunting spider who chanced at that moment to be prowling down the underside of the roof. He was one of the kind that does not spin webs, but catches its prey by stealing up and pouncing upon it. He knew that a little bat, when young enough, was no stronger than a big butterfly, and its blood would be quite good enough to suck. Stealthily he crept down into the brightness of that narrow ray, wondering whether the youngster was too big for him to tackle or not. He made up his mind to have a go at it. In fact, he was just gathering his immense, hairy legs beneath him for that fatal pounce of his, when he was himself pounced upon by a flickering shadow, plucked from his place, paralyzed by a bite through the thorax, and borne off to be devoured at leisure by a big bat which had just come in."

"Oh, I see," muttered the Child feelingly. He was himself a good deal afraid of spiders, and he meant that he understood now why it was less dangerous for little bats to go swinging wildly through the twilight clinging to their mother's necks than to stay at home alone.

But Uncle Andy paid no heed to the interruption.

"On the following night," he continued, "Little Silk Wing and his sister found themselves once more alone in the crevice at the end of the beam. They knew nothing of the peril from which they had been saved the night before, so they had learned no lesson. On this night they were restless, for their mother had fluttered away, leaving them both a little hungry. Hunting had been bad, and she had somewhat less milk for them than their growing appetites demanded. When once more that slender finger of moonlight, feeling its way through a chink in the roof, fell upon them in their crevice, it was the little sister this time that stirred and fluttered under its ghostly touch. She stretched one wing clear out upon the beam, and it was with difficulty that she restrained herself from giving vent to one of her infinitesimally thin squeaks, tiny as a bead that would drop through the eye of a needle.

"There was no great prowling spider to catch sight of her to-night. But a very hungry mouse, as it chanced, was just at that moment tip-toeing along the beam, wondering what he could find that would be good to eat. A lump of toasted cheese, or an old grease rag, or a well-starched collar, or a lump of cold suet pudding would have suited him nicely, but inexorable experience had taught him that such delicacies were seldom to be found in the roof of the barn. Under the circumstances, any old moth or beetle or spider, dead or alive, would be better than nothing.

"How his little black, beadlike eyes glistened as they fell upon that frail membrane of a wing fluttering on the beam! He darted forward, straight and swift as a weaver's shuttle, seized the delicate wing in his strong white teeth, and dragged the baby bat from her hiding place. Baby as she was, she was game. For one moment she sat up and chattered angry defiance, in a voice like the winding of a watch, but so thin and high-pitched that only a fine ear could have caught it. Then the mouse seized her, bit her tiny neck through, and dragged her off, sprawling limply, along the beam."

The Child nodded vigorously. He needed nothing more to convince him of the superior security of a life of travel and adventure, as compared with the truly appalling perils of staying at home.

"I see you take me!" said Uncle Andy approvingly. "But this, as you will observe, was not Little Silk Wing, but his sister. For Little Silk Wing life became now more interesting. Having only one baby left, his mother was able to carry him with her wherever she went. And she would not have left him alone again for the world, lest the unknown but dreadful fate which had befallen his sister should overtake him also.

"He was old enough and wide awake enough by this time to appreciate his advantages. He could feel the thrill of his mother's long, swinging swoops through the dewy coolness of the dusk. He could thrill in sympathy with her excitement of the chase, when she went fluttering up into the thin pallor of the upper air, following inexorably the desperate circlings of some high-flying cockchafer. When she dropped like lead to snap up some sluggish night moth, its wings were not yet quite dry from the chrysalis, as he clung to the swaying grass tops, his tiny eyes sparkled keenly. And when she went zigzagging, with breathless speed and terrifying violence, to evade the noiseless attack of the brown owl, he hung on to her neck with the tenacity of despair and imagined that their last hour had come. But it hadn't, for his mother was clever and expert. She had fooled many owls in her day.

"This adventurous life of his, of course, was lived entirely at night. During the day he slept, for the most part, folded in his mother's wing membranes, while she hung by her toes from the edge of a warped board in the warm goldy-brown shadows of the peak of the old barn. Outside, along the high ridge pole, swallows, king birds, jays, and pigeons gathered under the bright blue day to scream, chatter or coo their ideas of life, each according to the speech of its kind. And sometimes a cruel-eyed, hook-beaked, trim, well-bred looking hawk would perch there on the roof--quite alone, let me tell you--and gaze around as if wondering where all the other birds could have gone to! And once in a while also a splendid white-headed eagle would come down out of the blue, and wing low over the barn, and scream his thin, terrifying yelp, as if he were hoping there might be something like spring lambs hidden in the barn. But none of these things, affairs of the garish, dazzling, common day, moved in the least the row of contented little bats, all drowsing the useless hours of day away as they hung by their toes in the soft gloom under the roof. They would wake up now and again, to be sure, and squeak, and crowd each other a little. Or perhaps rouse themselves enough to make a long and careful toilet, combing their exquisitely fine fur with their delicate claws, and passing every corner of the elastic silken membrane of their wings daintily between their lips. But as for what went on in the gaudy light on the outer side of the roof, it concerned them not at all.

"But Little Silk Wing seems to have been born to illustrate the dangers which beset the life of the stay-at-home. For two days there had been an unwonted disturbance in the deep-grassed meadow that surrounded the barn. There had been the clanking of harness, the long, shrill, vibrant clatter of the scarlet mowing machine, the snorting of horses, and the shouting and laughter of men turning the fresh hay with their forks. Then came carts and children, with shrill laughter and screams of merriment, and the hay was hauled into the barn, load after load, fragrant, crackling with grasshoppers; and presently the mows began to fill up till the men with the pitchforks, sweating over the hot work of stowing the hay, came up beneath the eaves.

"Reluctantly and indignantly the bats woke up. Some of them, as the loads came in with noisy children on top, bestirred themselves sufficiently to shake the sleep out of their eyes, unfold their draped wings, flutter down into the daylight, and fly off to the peaceful gloom of the nearest woods.

"But the mother of Little Silk Wing was not so easily disturbed. She opened her tiny black beads of eyes as wide as she could, but gave no other sign of having noticed the invaders of the old barn's drowsy peace. She had seen such excitement before, and never known any harm to come of it. And she hated flying out into the full glare of the sun.

"But there is such a thing, you know, as being a bit too calm and self-possessed. As the hay got higher up in the mow, beyond the eaves, and almost up to the level of the topmost beam, one of the farm hands noticed the little bat hanging under the ridgepole. He was one of those dull fools, not cruel at heart, perhaps, but utterly without imagination, who, if they see something interesting, are apt to kill it just because they don't know any other way to show their interest. He up with the handle of his pitchfork and knocked the poor little mother bat far out into the stubble."

"_Oh_!" cried the Child. "Didn't it hurt her _dreadfully_?"

"It killed her," replied Uncle Andy simply. "But by chance it didn't hurt Little Silk Wing himself, as he clung desperately to her neck. The children, with cries of sympathy and reprobation, rushed to pick up the little dark body. But the black-and-white dog was ahead of them. He raced in and snatched the queer thing up, gently enough, in his teeth. But he let it drop again at once in huge surprise. It had come apart. All of a sudden it was two bats instead of one. He couldn't understand it at all. And neither could the children. And while they stood staring--the black-and-white dog with his tongue hanging out and his tail forgetting to wag, and the children with their eyes quite round--Little Silk Wing fluttered up into the air, flew hesitatingly this way and that for a moment till he felt sure of himself, and then darted off to the shelter of those woods where he had so often accompanied his mother on her hunting."

The Child heaved a sigh of relief. "I'm so glad he got off," he murmured.

"I thought you would be. That's why he did," said Uncle Andy enigmatically.

[The end]
Charles G. D. Roberts's short story: Little Silk Wing

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